Andreesen argues: "But the objective approach is only one way to tell stories and get at truth. Many stories don’t have two sides."
First: this is a mischaracterization of objectivity.
Objectivity doesn't mean "consider both or all sides of an argument", it means "judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices" (WordNet 2006). Very often, one (or more) sides of a story is simply wrong. Worse: they're often quite deliberately muddying the waters.
This is a point emphasized by economic historian Philip Mirowski: "[Neoliberals] honestly think that it's OK to pump lots of noise into the marketplace of ideas. That doesn't hurt things."
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I @ 39m30s
And this is pursued as a deliberate strategy called "agnotology" by Robert N. Proctor of Stanford: "the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. " More: http://redd.it/2363bo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology
On Andreesen's idea of tearing down the "Chinese wall" between reporting and business: "No other non-monopoly industry lets product creators off the hook on how the business works."
First off, that's not true. Many high-value information-centric activities function in just such a way: publishing, arts and theatrical groups, and more. While they may produce "popular" works, a great deal of effort is put into activities which reach deeper into meaning and understanding than the larger market will generally support. There's a strong level of positive externality associated with these activities -- that is, a public good which market transactions cannot capture for the producer.
And so there's a reason for the Chinese Wall:
The market for news (as opposed to, say, the entertainment content produced by Fox) is one of information itself. And information is a very difficult economic good at the best of times:
• It's nonuniform. One piece of information isn't interchangeable with another, unlike, say, one bottle of water, shipment of grain, unit of lumber, mass-produced garment, or unit of unskilled or semi-skilled labor.
• Fixed and marginal costs are highly disproportionate. Sending someone to where the news is, or digging to the bottom of a complex story, is expensive in labor, time, and other resources. Once produced, words, copy, audio, or video can be reproduced and retransmitted around the world instantly for free. Much as for software.
• There's a very strong time value. For electronic market trading, now measured in miliseconds, and for much else, between minutes and a day or so for breaking stories. The precise same work product after its sell-by date is effectively worthless.
• The potential for bias, accuracy, and relevance in news is profound. Skewed reporting to meet business needs can very, very rapidly incentivize coverage which is not actually useful, informative, or relevant.
There's a strong argument to be made, in my opinion, that news should be strongly sheltered from market forces, and often the news sources which are the most reliable do come from organizations which are not run as well, from a business perspective, as they might be. Two of these, the British Guardian and the American Christian Science Monitor punch well above their weight, and even The New York Times, while profitable, is less so than its operations, size, and influence would seem to dictate.
Yes, there are any number of inefficiencies and obsolete practices within existing news organizations, but I find this set of prescriptions chilling.
If Andreesen's vision is the future of news, then I'm very, very bearish.